Can someone clarify the importance of Scribe SEO?
-
Hi guys,
I was reading The Beginner's Guide to SEO and was confused about the importance of keyword density.
As I see it, the main purpose of tools like Scribe SEO revolve around analyzing keyword density, however, Chapter 9 of "The Beginner's Guide to SEO" seems to downplay its importance and says
"Despite being proven untrue time and again, this myth has legs. Many SEO tools still feed on the concept that keyword density is an important metric. It's not."
If this is true, what is the real value of tools like Scribe SEO? Currently, I follow keyword analysis tools very closely, and try to get the recommended density in my articles to help build back links. Should I be focusing heavily on the density and prominence of keywords like I am in the picture below, or is there another way you suggest I go about using these tools?
-
As the co-creator of Scribe I am more than happy to address your question.
First, Scribe is not a keyword density checking tool. It is designed to help writers in creating and structuring their content so search engines can better "understand" and index the content.
Second, Scribe contains a number of other features including keyword research/analysis, internal link organization and intelligent ways to connect your content with other sites through online relationship building tools. For a complete overview please go to http://scribecontent.com/demo/ for a video overview.
As to your specific point.
While density does not matter, frequency does. In information retrieval, term frequency is a very important part of most publish search algorithms used at conferences like TReC, etc. To see its importance, there are several excellent mathematical examples at http://www.miislita.com/ . Please note that Dr Garcia, who publishes at this site and was a consultant to us on Scribe v4, is the one that penned the epic "Keyword Density of Non sense" post that disputed the role of density as a ranking factor.
A key component of "understanding" content is both in the analysis of term frequency and term placement. While density calculations, when done properly, do provide some insight as to relative usage; the reality is that most all search systems review term frequency and weight it with other factors in order to determine the probability that a specific document is related to the query.
I think that Moosa H makes a good point in that you do want to write for humans first. Scribe helps you improve your writing to make it easier for search engines to understand what you are writing about.
Samer, thank you for your question and I hope my response provides some clarification to your question.
-
Have a watch of this video by Matt Cutts, where he explains that the one thing people should NOT focus on is keyword density.
Andy
-
Keyword density is a real shit and i guess i have talked about this a million times and i have some strong logic behind this...
1. Write for Humans not Machines
Besides search engine, there are humans who must be more important than any other machine on earth (even more important than Google) because they pay you the real money. If you are going to care too much about keywords and not caring about how that will impact user experience you might win the rankings but might not win customers and all you will gain out of it will be the increase in bounce rate (may be some un-loyal customers).
2. Google is changing
Google is changing like anything... so getting top rankings for your desired key phrases just by keeping a good percentage of keyword density in it, might not work...
Why not play natural?
It’s good to be natural. It’s good to write for humans and not machines...so don’t really care about the density of keyword in the document but care more about how people will react to it.
Scribe SEO?
This software seems promising to me in a one go as it allows you to extract what’s hot from difference resources and get you the topics that will be most attracted to your audience in the current times.
Calculating keyword density can be a part of it but i don’t think they are based on this... so go creative and use this tool to get suggestions but relying on any tool (even SEOmoz) will be dangerous as this industry love quick changes...
-
The pricing is insane too. It's not worth putting the money and effort into using the software. It's just the hype copyblogger team is doing.
-
About 5 years ago, I would rank pages for just about any moderately competitive phrase under the sun, pretty much by boosting as close to 5.5% keyword density as possible on a domain with a good bit of trust. That mentality that you see in Scribe SEO could still gain some ground, but it's a little antiquated.
The issue that over time, Google's gotten smarter (and continues to do so). Including keywords still matters, and not over-doing it does as well. What's changed, is that Google has gotten better at understanding language. Sure, you could stuff "cheap london flights" 15 times into a copy and probably still make it make sense if you really try, but should you?
Everything that you see Microsoft Word doing, analyzing grammar and reading levels, you can bet Google is capable of doing too. And it's pretty well-established now that things like root word stemming (+s, +ed, +ing) and synonyms play too. That sort of thing is more enjoyable for a reader too, so it stands to reason that Google would prefer it. And, from what I've seen in recent years, it seems to look more and more like they do.
So, I'd include keywords/phrases. I'd include them especially in first 1/3 of a sentence, paragraph, and page; lead in noun-first. But I wouldn't let it dictate your writing too much from there.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
In Google Analytics > Acquisition > Queries. The top query just says (other), can someone fill me in on to what this means?
I have linked the account to the Google Search Console. In top spot is says (other) followed by other keywords the (other) data is the majority.
Reporting & Analytics | | GSAstonMoz0 -
Google SERP showing a URL with UTM_source attached - why? Can I stop it?
I just found a Google search results page showing a URL with a UTM source tag attached. Any idea how or why this has happened? How can I stop it as I'm guessing this is overwriting my organic visits with referrals from this site. See attached photo for pic of SERP page. The link is going here: http://employment.govt.nz/er/holidaysandleave/parentalleave/?utm_source=newzealandnow.govt.nz 5vxTDTi.png
Reporting & Analytics | | DanielleNZ0 -
Can I move Google tracking from one account to another?
Hi: We've recently taken over the hosting of a client's web site. Is there a way to move the Google Analytics tracking from the old host's account to the client's account without losing all the history?
Reporting & Analytics | | Stamats0 -
Does PPC affect SEO Traffic?
Last week my website (www.cooke.co.uk) started PPC advertising with Google. This has been successful in increasing the amount of overall traffic to the site. However, since we started the PPC advertising, our traffic from organic search has decreased significantly. Our rankings haven't changed dramatically enough to warrant such a decrease. Has anyone else been in a situation where organic traffic has dropped as a result of launching a paid campaign? What did you do to rectify it? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
SEO Moz Errors
We have SEO Moz Errors and warnings showing up, yet we have cleaned them
Reporting & Analytics | | RNK
up. The same errors were showing up in Google's Webmaster tools but after we corrected them they do not show up as crawl errors in Webmaster tools.
Why is SEO Moz different and why does it continue to show corrections already made.0 -
Can anyone shed some light on mobile inbound call tracking?
Is there any way to track the call button from the local listings within the mobile SERPs??
Reporting & Analytics | | cybercom0 -
How can I verify if someone is Google Analytics certified?
I am looking to hire an IC to help with analytics. I need to know how I can verify if they are GA certified. They gave me a link to a http://www.starttest.com profile. Is that legit?
Reporting & Analytics | | inhouseseo0 -
Help with local SEO strategy for service industries
Here is the scenario I often wonder about: My client's tree removal service is ranking in #1 in local search for
Reporting & Analytics | | MozMan2
"tree removal town state." His Google Places account is set for a 30 mile radius. He has lots of directory listings and positive reviews. Some inbound links as well. The same client is ranking #1 in organic listing for "tree removal county state" ...I chose to target the county for organic listings because the client was dominating local search for the town. My reasoning: I thought, Google local search would bring all of the local specific searches for "tree removal town state" and organic listings would bring the broader searches for "tree removal county state." That is exactly what's happening and stats show there are some visitors coming to the site searching with the county name. Not a ton of traffic but a lot of keyword variations using the county name. The bulk of the traffic comes from the his Google Places listing for the town the business is located in which is great. Dilemma: My client is not ranking in local search results for neighboring towns just a few miles away and certainly not ranking in organic listings for neighboring towns either because we are targeting the county. He has a long list of town names he services in the footer area and this does seem to help for organic search in neighboring towns with little competition. Broad Question: How can I optimize pages for the same services in neighboring towns without duplicating content. For example, the home page title tag and H1 reads:
Tree Removal, Tree Trimming, Stump Removal, County State It would be very easy to create identical pages with title tags and page headings for the different towns but that would undoubtedly create duplicate content and would look weird to someone browsing the site. Specific Questions: Should I put the town name where the business is located in the title tag even though the site already ranks #1 for that town in local search, without having the town in the title tag? Why not use this importunity for an area that we are not ranking for? Do I nix the county and state and try to insert another town or two in the title and H1? Ideally I would like to have this site rank well in local search for all of the neighboring towns. This may be too broad of a post, (it is my first one) but perhaps there are a few of you out there that can outline strategies that work for service industries like, lawn care, tree removal, landscaping, etc. Thanks for reading.0